Sunday, March 18, 2018

First Flights to Florida: GPS-tracked Swallow-tailed Kites return to their breeding grounds

If you live in the Southeast, you may have had the privilege
in the last few weeks of spotting a graceful black and white raptor soaring
over the treetops. They are starting to
settle in to nesting territories and court with display flights. They clutch
snakes, anoles, or Spanish moss to attract the right mate to the right tree in the
right nesting stand – all to do their best to advance their genes into the next
generation of Swallow-tailed Kites.The
kites have come a long way, most of them 5,000 miles or more, and some are yet
to arrive, but they all are running “on time”.These are things we wouldn’t know without the fantastic tools of
satellite and GSM technology, from which we are learning so much about
migration timing, routes, roost sites, and habits. We need all this information
to conserve this spectacular species.

Here we’ll feature the return of two of Florida’s
Swallow-tailed Kites, Babcock and MIA, to their breeding territories after they crossed the often-deadly Gulf of Mexico.

Babcock started north in mid-January. After a 2-week
stopover in Amazonas, Brazil, she stuck to a rapid pace through South and
Central America. In Honduras she took a short cut, one we see many kites take,
across the Gulf of Honduras to northern Belize. After a brief over-night on the
Yucatán, Babcock caught a tailwind on the morning of 7 March that enabled her to reach land at Cape Sable, Florida, after 36 hours. She spent a night in the
Picayune Strand State Forest near Naples, Florida, then returned to her breeding territory in Charlotte County by 9 March.

MIA perches in a pine. Photo by Alice Horst 2018.

MIA wintered close to Babcock, in Mato Grosso do Sul,
Brazil. They departed their winter ranges within a day of each other, although
over 160 miles apart at that point. They took a very similar route northward
and were at one time within 3 miles of each other. We’ve had a lag in MIA’s
data across the Gulf of Mexico, but have learned from some of our great
supporters that he was, in fact, back on his former territory by 8 March. He has
been photographed courting and nest building once again. No time wasted!

Avian Research and Conservation Institute

Once seen along the Mississippi River as far north as Minnesota, the Swallow-tailed Kite's range is now just a third its historic size. In the last 40 years, up to 80% of formerly common bird species have declined.

ARCI works to develop management techniques for these at-risk birds, but we must apply them now, before their recovery becomes impossible.

Since 1996, we have used satellite telemetry to study the ecology of Swallow-tailed Kites, including the 10,000 mile migration they make each year to the humid plains of Brazil and back to the lowlands of the southeast U.S.

Avian Research and Conservation Institute (ARCI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has gained attention and respect for difficult, problem-solving research on rare and imperiled birds.